Category: social media

  • Facebook Morphs Blogging Again

    adam-head-09-100px-squareBlogging, by very nature, is a fluid art. Just a few years ago I thought I was pretty slick because I could journal on my computer using Microsoft Word. Flash forward a few years, to around 2000, and I learned that I could take those Word documents and convert them to webpages. It was cumbersome and I didn’t do it very often… but it was awesome. Then Blogger.com took “the web log” out of the hands of the HTML king and made blogging accessible to just about anyone willing to give it a shot. I was fasinated that I could link to friends blogs and that we could leave comments for one anothers posts. A few years later, 2005-2006 and Typepad and WordPress suddenly made it possible for blogs to live on their own domain easily.

    In 2007-2008, blogging became all about search and syndication. I started seeing my stats level off while I could tell my reach greatly extended. RSS (really simple syndication) made my content portable and SEO (search engine optimization) got my blog noticed high in Google search results.

    facebook2009 has seen blogging morph again. Facebook’s power in the adult demographic has brought blog syndication to a whole new level. Now my posts appear on my Facebook friend’s timeline, so a whole new audience of people has been added to the pool of people who read my blog. When they comment that ends up on their friends timeline, which greatly expands the pool of people reading and commenting on my stuff. (Though there isn’t yet a matrix for this so that’s a bit frustrating.) In the past few months I’ve run into tons of people who read my blog and I have no idea who they are or how they got here… but it’s awesome!

    More noticeably, in the past few months I’ve noticed a steep uptick in folks who read my blog posts exclusively on Facebook and comment there as well. Often times, I’m left with a post which generates two separate conversations. Which is really cool! On top of that, Twitter has further expanded my blogs discussion and reach. While there is some overlap, Twitter is mostly a different audience for my content.

    Wagon_WheelGoing forward, adammclane.com is now and will continue to be the hub of my online presence. It feeds RSS, search results, Facebook, and Twitter. I think of the personal blog as the engine that powers everything else. That said, my recommendation for beginners has begun to morph. You can certainly do the same thing with a WordPress.com blog (free) or even a Facebook account.

    And since I know about 75% of the people who are reading this post will never make it to adammclane.com, here are some ways we can connect. We can be Facebook friends. You can follow me on Twitter. We can pool links on delicious. You can be a contact on Flickr. You can subscribe to my blog via RSS. But you can’t be my Myspace friend. That’s so 2005.

  • 3 Reasons Gen Y Doesn’t Get Twitter

    get-twitter

    Great little read here from Millenial Marketing about Twitter adoption of middle adolescents. (The core group for explosive growth of Myspace and Facebook.)

    To summarize here points, Notre Dame marketing professor Carol Phillips suggests these 3 reasons Twitter hasn’t popped in that megamarket.

    1. Twitter adds no meaningful functionality that Facebook doesn’t. (Calendar, messaging, photos, etc.)

    2. No self-branding of personality/activities beyond a status update. Things happen so fast there is no time for friends to react to what you’re doing.

    3. Millenials aren’t accustomed to making friends online. They’ve been warned against that their entire lives!

    Do the middle adolescents in your life use Twitter? Why or why not?

  • Facebook Land Grab

    FaceBook-256x256Last night’s chaos on Facebook was a fascinating display of “why not to be afraid of internet rumors.” Millions of people anxiously waited online staring at facebook.com/username/ hoping that they could register their name as a vanity URL. I participated in a lively chat on Mashable last night, there was a lot of anxiety, silliness, and even some worry leading up to the big moment. Would the site crash? Would people be able to get their URLs?

    I’m a social media junkie and I needed to make sure that I was a part of it. Plus, I needed to make sure I secured two page names for YS that were eligible.

    Think about the rules for a second and you’ll realize why it was silly to be in a panic:

    – Each individual could name their account one URL. Most people are going to take their name or their Twitter handle or a knickname. Since the URL isn’t transferrable (like website names are) and you can’t ever change it. Unless your name is really popular you don’t have much to worry about.

    – Pages with more than 1,000 fans could name their eligible fan page one URL. Think about it. That’s a lot of fans. (Probably 1% of pages) What do you think they are going to select? The name of their group/company/band or say… facebook.com/Kroger.

    – Any trademark holder was invited to come early and protect their trademarks. This was done to prevent individuals from naming their accounts facebook.com/Lakers

    – Behind the scenes Facebook handled URLs and redirects for major companies, bloggers, and celebrities. This prevented people from squatting on accounts for people like Ashton Kutcher, Miley Cyrus, and CNN.

    Of course that doesn’t mean there isn’t some controversy out there. Over then next few weeks some awesome squatting will come to light. My favorite one so far is facebook.com/Barack. Well done Tomas, well done. Certainly there will be some squatting. But since the URL can’t be sold, transfered or even gifted… there really isn’t a benefit to squatting on someone’s URL.

    For those of us who live in an “under 1000 fans” world, the next land grab is 6/28. That’s when Facebook opens up vanity URLs to groups, causes, and smaller pages. There wasn’t much chaos created last night. The real damage comes 6/28.

  • Goodbye Creepy Guy

    Goodbye Creepy Guy

    For as long as we’ve lived in this house I’ve tried to keep our wireless network open. My feeling has always been that access to the internet should be free and high speed whenever possible. And since I love open wireless networks when I travel I thought it was only fair that I shared in the love.

    But the flip side is the weirdness of someone you don’t know sitting outside your house on a laptop.  You wonder… what are they doing? Are they trying to hack my home network? Are they trying to look at pictures of my kids?

    This morning I saw some creepy guy slither out of the driver side of his minivan and get in the backseat, reaching for his laptop. I’m not an expert at picking out pedophiles but I do watch To Catch a Predator on MSNBC and I started to feel like Chris Hansen. To test this theory I walked to the basement and powered off our wireless router. Sure enough, in about 5 minutes he crawled away.

    When I powered it back up, I just went to the configuration IP and set a password. Sure, I know WEP can be cracked by anyone… but I just feel slightly better about it now.

    I know several people come over to use our house as a wifi tea room. You all are still invited! I’ll just give you my password.

  • The economy of hate

    The economy of hate

    I probably spend more time on the internet than anyone else I know. I’ll admit it, I’m a web dork. Let me try to spell out a trend I see on ministry websites, youth ministry sites, personal blogs, Facebook, and the rest of the social media/social networking map.
    If the news (Media 1.0) was subtitled “If it bleeds, it leads.” The citizen news (Media 2.0) could be subtitled “If it flames, it sells.”

    Here’s a simple fact about the internet: If you want the easiest way to draw traffic to your site/blog/ministry/church all you have to do is flame people. Start a site about how much you hate something and you’ll draw traffic.

    My definition of “flame” on the net:     To bad mouth for the sake of creating discussion and more bad mouthing without ever checking the source to fact check.

    Example: I’m on the pastoral staff at my church. In 5+ years of full time ministry I can only think of 1-2 times when someone came to me in public or private and bad mouthed me. (Rumor mill doesn’t count since that’s ignored) But on the internet it happens many times a year. Obviously this happens because it’s not face to face, it doesn’t seem “real” and it is thought that things written on the internet don’t count as much as things said in person. (Uh, they still hurt!)

    Why is this?     Here’s the way most stuff on the web works. I write about something and then the reader either talks about it or doesn’t. And people are more likely to link to or forward something that is dirty than they are something that is benign, informative, or encouraging. That’s just the nature of communicating in the new media. The result is that some people write purely to be read and since “flaming sells” they know that flaming people/ministries/churches will draw more notoriety, traffic, and ultimately income.

    Normal content + traffic = $1

    Hate content + traffic = $5

    That’s pretty much what it looks like. If your site or blog flames someone you’ll get more traffic. If you do it habitually you’ll grow like mad. Look at Digg.com for example. (Chris Garret talked about this today) The only time my stuff gets on Digg is if I either post it myself or if I say something considered flame worth.

    Another example: 18 months ago I wrote an article about why I don’t do retreats anymore. It wasn’t really a flame but it was slanted away from the camping industry. It got 4,000+ reads. Jason Raitz wrote the counter to that article… it only got read 1,000 times. A couple weeks ago we published an article called “Why most mission trips are a waste of time.” Forget the fact that the article was written 2 years ago… even though we’ve published pro-mission trip articles before… Noel’s article got mountains of traffic. (Compare the comments alone)

    So are you saying that all blog traffic is drawn to flame speech? Not at all… just among “normal content.” When you say something that is remarkable, the math looks like this:

    Remarkable content + traffic = $10+

    Which leads to my point… most people write hate/flame based content because they don’t have the guts/brains/skills to write something remarkable. In other words, it is easier to draw traffic with flame-worthy content than it is to draw traffic with remarkable content.

    Adam’s Law of Traffic: Write something remarkable and everyone will talk about it. Write about something you hate about someone and some people will talk about it. Write about normal stuff and only your mama will talk about it.

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